After another hour finalizing the details of the militia's defensive sectors and talking about things from Earth, Arthur said his goodbyes. He walked through the dimly lit corridors of the castle, where flickering torches cast long, dancing shadows against the stone walls.
Upon reaching his quarters, he found the room bathed in a comfortable, albeit primitive, gloom. A single candle flickered on the nightstand, its flame dancing in the draft. Arthur sat on the edge of his straw bed, the dry stalks crackling beneath him. The boredom he had been repressing all day began to seep into his mind like a cold mist.
He had fulfilled his obligations for the day. He checked Barov's records for discrepancies, adjusted the supply logistics with Karl, and warned Roland about the turtle-wolves and flying lion beasts that might appear later in the winter. Now, he was just a passenger in time, waiting for the plot to unfold.
He remembered the conversation he'd had with William the day before. William had bragged — and rightly so — about earning 150 credits for significantly altering the course of history. By saving Captain Greyhound, Erik, and Trevor, William not only consolidated his place in the army but also gained the "Power" to see the statuses of the extras.
Arthur sighed and waved his hand in the air, manifesting his own translucent blue interface. A soft glow illuminated his face.
[CURRENT BALANCE: 300 Credits]
The numbers stared back at him, silent and promising.
Arthur knew he wasn't like William. He didn't have the "Protagonist Syndrome" that drove people to throw themselves into battle with a sword and a war cry. He was a man of systems, art, cold and relentless logic. The idea of being on the front lines, smelling the fetid stench of demonic blood and dodging claws, filled him with a very rational dread. He wasn't a martial artist. He was a strategist.
— "But even a strategist like me needs an ace up his sleeve," — he thought, his heart beginning to race.
— "If I can't be a warrior, I'll be a mage who fights from a distance." —
He analyzed his main attribute: Telekinesis. At Level 1, it was little more than a parlor trick. He could flip a coin into the air or push a spoon across a table if he concentrated hard enough. It was useless in combat, and even more so in the Battle of Divine Will.
— "But what if I invest everything into Magic Power?" —
His mind buzzed with possibilities. In the world of Release That Witch, magic was a manifestation of will filtered through the body. If he drastically increased his capacity, his telekinesis wouldn't just move spoons — it would move entire houses. He could create invisible barriers to protect himself, snap the necks of hybrids from five meters away, or even elevate himself to the skies. He could become a one-man artillery battery.
Excitement, pure and electrifying, washed over him. He opened the Attribute Shop. Each point cost 40 credits.
Arthur did not hesitate. He wasn't interested in a balanced physical build. He wanted the apex. He invested 280 credits, applying 7 points directly into Magic Power.
The instant he confirmed the transaction, the blue screen vanished, replaced by a blinding pulse of golden light that only he could see.
Arthur gasped, his back arching as a torrent of energy erupted from his solar plexus. It wasn't painful, but it was overwhelming — like an immense gale. The energy coursed through his nervous system with precision, reconfiguring his brain and expanding his "mental muscle."
His vision sharpened. The flickering candle flame in the corner of the room suddenly felt like a physical object he could touch with his mind. He could feel the weight of the air, the vibration of the wind against the castle stones, and the subtle pulsation of the building itself.
His telekinesis, once a fragile thread, was now a thick, vibrating cable of pure intent. He reached out with his mind toward a heavy wooden chair across the room. Without making a sound, the chair rose a meter and a half into the air, hovering as steadily as if it were bolted to the ceiling. He felt no strain. He could have held ten of them.
Arthur looked at his own hands, which trembled slightly from the enormous amount of power radiating from them. He was no longer just a consultant. Nor a mere observer of Roland's rise to power.
He was now a variable that the history of this world had never foreseen.
As the golden glow faded from his eyes, a wicked smile appeared on Arthur's lips. The Months of the Demons were coming, but for the first time, he didn't worry about the "Protagonist" William taking all the glory.
Arthur had just leveled the playing field, and he did it without even having to pick up a sword.
The silence of his stone-walled room felt completely different now. It wasn't empty; it was a canvas, richly textured and brimming with kinetic potential. Every object, from the iron poker by the cold fireplace to the heavy leather-bound ledgers stacked on his desk, seemed connected to his brain by invisible, diaphanous threads. He didn't just see them anymore; he felt their mass, their center of gravity, and the exact amount of psychic touch needed to manipulate them.
He slowly lowered his hands, letting the physical tremors subside, and began to analyze the profound change that had occurred in his soul after transmigrating.
Why telekinesis?
When the system first analyzed his psyche to determine his initial attribute, it didn't grant him the raw, destructive pyromancy that so many fantasy protagonists desired. It didn't give him the extraordinary physical enhancements of a knight, nor the elemental manipulation of wind or water. It gave him the power of the mind.
Arthur closed his eyes and allowed himself a rare moment of nostalgia, diving into the memories of his past life — a life of glowing screens, strategy games, and digital encyclopedias. He realized that his deep affinity for this specific power likely stemmed from a deeply rooted childhood obsession.
His mind conjured the majestic and awe-inspiring image of a white leviathan with dark blue accents hovering over a stormy ocean, its enormous wings capable of tearing the clouds apart. Lugia. The Guardian of the Seas. And then, shifting the memory, he visualized an elegant, alien entity composed of twisted, DNA-like structures in shades of orange and blue, a creature of pure, crystalline logic with shifting forms. Deoxys.
These weren't just pokémon to him; they were his favorite fictional creatures. Both were supreme entities defined by their Psychic types. They didn't rely on brute, muscular strength. They imposed their will upon reality itself. Lugia could flatten an entire landscape with an invisible blast of pressure, an elegant application of psychic weight, putting the three legendary birds to sleep. Deoxys could dismantle a threat with surgical precision, manipulating matter and gravity as easily as breathing.
Arthur had spent hundreds of hours analyzing their lore, statistics, and fictional mechanics. He had always romanticized the idea of a completely invisible power, a force that required absolute mental discipline rather than mere physical effort. Now, it all made sense. The transmigration system, tapping into the core of his personality, his preferences, and his greatest passions, had manifested that affinity. His love for the two psychic Pokémon essentially pre-programmed his soul for telekinesis. He wasn't just moving objects; he was channeling the same conceptual grace and terrifying mastery he had always admired.
Opening his eyes, Arthur decided it was time to explore the limits of this new reality.
He looked at the heavy wooden chair still suspended in the air. With sheer willpower, he made it rotate slowly. At first, the chair spun around an invisible axis. Then, he increased the mental pressure. The chair transformed into a small, localized tornado of oak and shadow, spinning so fast the air whistled around it. With a sharp mental snap, he stopped it abruptly. Zero inertia. Zero wobble. It hung there, perfectly motionless, defying the laws of physics with absolute mockery.
Impressive, he thought, but he still needed to know its combat parameters. Objects are one thing. Flesh, bone, and fighting spirit are another.
He closed his eyes and mentally simulated the weight, resistance, and muscular tension of a fully grown, battle-hardened adult man. He imagined one of the castle guards — eighty kilos of flesh, bone, leather, and chainmail — charging at him with a drawn sword. Would he be able to stop him?
Arthur extended his mind toward the massive, immovable canopy bed in the center of his room. He imagined the four sturdy wooden posts as the limbs of his attacker. He didn't try to lift the bed; he tried to immobilize it. He applied a crushing, multidirectional telekinetic pressure around the thick wooden pillars.
The sound of creaking wood echoed through the room. The dense oak began to splinter under the invisible vise. He squeezed harder, visualizing the constriction of a man's wrists, the locking of kneecaps, the absolute paralysis of the spine. The immense amount of Magic Power he now possessed made it all trivial. He realized, with a chilling wave of clarity, that he could easily immobilize not just one, but perhaps three or four grown men simultaneously. If a knight attacked him, Arthur wouldn't need to dodge. He would simply freeze him in mid-air, locking his joints so tightly that his own momentum would shatter his bones.
— "Lugia's precision," — Arthur murmured, a cold smile forming in the darkness. — "The ability to instantly halt life without shedding a drop of my own blood." —
But immobilization was a defensive maneuver. Arthur needed mobility. He needed to know if he could achieve the ultimate fantasy: unassisted flight.
He stood in the center of the room, emptying his mind of all distractions. He imagined the telekinetic energy not as reaching hands, but as a platform forming under his boots and a harness wrapping securely around his torso. He took a deep breath and pushed the stone floor down with his mind, while simultaneously pulling his own body up.
For a terrifying, breathtaking second, he felt a wave of intense vertigo. His stomach churned as the fundamental law of gravity lost its grip on his body.
His boots silently left the stone floor.
He was hovering. Fifteen centimeters. One foot. Three feet.
Arthur opened his arms to balance himself, although he soon realized that physical balance was irrelevant. His center of gravity was dictated entirely by his mind. He propelled himself upward, floating toward the vaulted ceiling of his quarters. A profound sense of euphoria washed over him. It was a silent, frictionless ascent.
However, as his head neared the rafters, he felt the "grip" begin to unravel. It wasn't that his Magic Power was depleting; rather, it was a limitation of his current range. He instinctively understood the physics of his new magic. His telekinesis required an anchor, a physical proximity to a massive surface — like the ground or a heavy structure — to push off from. Through careful mental calculations, he estimated the distance.
Five meters.
He could achieve telekinetic flight, true and unrestricted three-dimensional mobility, but only up to an altitude of approximately five meters from a solid surface. If he tried to cross that imaginary limit, the psychic link would weaken and he would plummet.
— "Five meters is more than enough," — Arthur reasoned, hovering comfortably near the stone arch of the ceiling. — "That puts me out of range of ordinary melee weapons. It allows me to bypass walls, traps, and difficult terrain. I am a ghost." —
The urge to test this in the open world became unbearable. The confines of his room were too suffocating for a power that demanded open air. He needed to hunt. He needed to apply this lethal force to a living organism to truly understand his capabilities before the real war began.
Arthur slowly floated back down to the floor. He moved toward the large, heavy wooden shutters of his window. He didn't use his hands. A gentle wave of telekinetic force unlocked the iron latch, and the shutters swung outward without a single creak.
The night air of Border Town rushed in, biting and frigid. It carried the scent of wood smoke, damp earth, and the unmistakable chill of the approaching winter. Outside, the town was a patchwork of dark shadows and silver moonlight. A few dying embers glowed in the street bonfires, but otherwise, the world slept.
It was perfect. Because it was the dead of night, no one would look up. No commoner, no patrolling militiaman, and certainly no noble would ever expect to see a man flying through the dark sky. In this era, the night sky belonged to the birds and the gods. The concept of aerial surveillance or assassination was completely unfeasible.
Arthur stepped out onto the windowsill. He looked down at the courtyard below, a twelve-meter drop that would easily shatter the legs of any normal man.
He didn't hesitate. He stepped into the void.
Instead of falling, the invisible platform caught him immediately. He stabilized his altitude, keeping himself exactly five meters above the slanted tile roofs of the castle's lower annexes.
— "Let's ride the wind," — he whispered.
He leaned forward mentally, altering the telekinetic vectors. He shot forward, gliding over the castle walls with a breathtaking smoothness. The sensation of the cold wind rushing past his face, tearing at his hair and his cloak, was intoxicating. He was flying. He was actually flying.
He soared through the airspace above Border Town with growing confidence. He kept a low profile, gliding close to the thatched roofs of the commoners' district. Below him, the muddy, winding streets were completely deserted. He passed over two militiamen patrolling the area with torches. They were chatting nonchalantly about their rations, completely oblivious to the specter hovering just five meters above their heads. The shadows of the night swallowed Arthur entirely.
In a matter of minutes, the dilapidated wooden houses and the incomplete stone wall of Roland's defense disappeared behind him. Before him rose the imposing, jagged silhouette of the Concealing Forest.
— "Now comes the real challenge!" — Arthur murmured confidently.